Legal Case Summary

. Is it your argument that as soon as all of the steps that must be taken in connection with the traffic stop are completed, and the stop must end, or is it that nothing more can be done after the ticket is issued? In other words, is it the length of time, or is it the formal act of giving the ticket or the warning that cuts things off? It is the formal act, once the act of the traffic stop is done, which would be the reason, which would be the purpose for the stop. Once that is done, that is the point. Yes, but that is done. It's not clear. Two questions. In Justice Scalia's hypothetical, the officer said, I'm not going to give you a ticket. But I just want to ask you a few questions. It seems to me that under your argument, those questions are impermissible because he's made his decision. He's not going to give a ticket. On the other hand, Justice Alito indicated, suppose that he said, now, I've finished your ticket, but before I give it to you, I'm going to go back to the police car and check to see if there are warrants, is that all right? If it is a completion of the... He said, I've finished writing the ticket. I've folded my notebook. I'm going to give you this ticket. But I'm first going to go back and see if my radio checkers come in to verify your license place. Is that permitted? If it is the end of the traffic stop, it is not. First of all, that this is the... That is the hypotheticals that... Have a wrong presumption, okay? There are certain tasks involved in giving a traffic ticket, correct? Yes, Your Honor. Yes. And those include checking for warrants, checking for tickets on the car, checking identity, asking questions about that. And generally with identity, it also has to do with where you're going and where you're coming from. Correct? Yes, Your Honor. And conducting a self-sales. That's all self-sales, right? I'm sorry. Justice Sotomayor. I didn't hear that

. My question for you... And it can't be the formal act of writing the ticket. It has to be the formal... It has to be the acts related to the mission. When you finish those, that's when the stop ends. Yes, Your Honor. That is exactly right. Yes, but you've tied it to just writing and handing over the ticket, but... Or you've not even doing that. You're saying just writing the ticket, which is crazy. If, in fact, that's the impression that I gave that is wrong. It's not the formal handing of the ticket is when the stop is complete. Once with the justification for the stop and the purpose is complete, the ticket is done, whether it is a warning, whether it is handed to them. At some point in time, the ticket is done, and that's the invitation. Justice Sotomayor's question assumes, and you currently embrace the assumption, that checking on whether you have a proper license, checking whether the car is stolen, all of these things are embraced within the mission when the only basis for the stop is you have a broken tail light. How does that have anything to do with the broken tail light? Those are things, Your Honor, that have been accepted as part of... I see. Perhaps, and maybe dog sniffing should be too, right? We call it dog sniffing as accepted, so long as it's done before... Why? Before completion of... The completion of the mission

. Which includes not just the broken tail light, but also inquiring into your license, inquiring into prior arrests. That's all part of the mission. Yes, Your Honor. Why wouldn't you make the dog sniff part of the mission? And that'll solve the problem. Part of the mission when you stop somebody is not just the broken tail light, but whether the car is stolen, whether you have drugs on the car, so let's bring in the dog and do the car sniff. I mean, you're willing to expand the mission to everything up to but not beyond the dog sniff. Why do you do that? You expand the mission, Your Honor, for everything that comes within the task that are part of the traffic stop. The dog sniff... It's a broken tail light. That's the only thing that comes within the traffic stop. All the rest is added on. And you let the man in on. Why don't you let the man on the dog sniff? You do as long as it occurs before the ticket is delivered, is that right? You do if it's done before the traffic stop is done. The ticket would not be a formal part of the mission. You see the problem is how do you define the traffic stop? And you've already indicated that the traffic stop can include some of the questions. You're really, I think, much better off if you stick with the formal rule. Once you hand the ticket, that's the end of it. Then you have a formal rule. You're not arguing that. And that leads us open to the question, why can't we include the dog stop? Well, the dog sniff... The policy question. So, answer it as a policy question. Don't tie it to the stop or not. Tie it to something else. As a policy question, if you could end it with the handing of the ticket, that would be acceptable. If we tie the traffic ticket as the end of the end of the justification for the stop, then we can't wait to be told that it's okay to have an honest sniff. So long as it's before the ticket is issued, then every police officer other than those who are uninformed or incompetent will delay the handing over of the ticket until the dog sniffs complete it. So what does that, what does that accomplish? I mean, it's great for your client, but what does it do for the law? You Honor, I think when it does, first, if you have officers that wait, if that's the, if that's the question, you Honor, if they wait for the pocket, put the ticket in the pocket, if you, if we adopt a formal rule, that's one of the, one of the options, a formal rule

. Once you hand over the ticket, that's it. You can't do anything more. The person has to be allowed to go. All right. Is that your argument or not? That is your argument. Yes. And what does that accomplish? What accomplishes is the, is the enforcement of the Fourth Amendment. Once the stop is done, once the purpose is done, the justification is done, the question is, is this, is this very, just the easiest thing to get around by simply saying that we're the sequence in which I will do this? I won't think of issuing the ticket until I've had the dog sniff. So that's the problem. What are you accomplishing? Say, we make, we make the handing over the ticket, the end of the legitimate stop. Well, then the police can best say, I'm going to defer that a few minutes until the dog sniff occurs. So it just, it seems that you're not going to accomplish any protection for individuals if that's your position, that it is just a question of when you do it. And so if you do it during the stop before the ticket issue is okay, and if you do it two minutes after, it's not okay. It is, it is okay when the traffic stop is done, when the mission is complete. You can't possibly mean that. You can't possibly mean that. Well, yes. The stopping officer says, yeah, I'm done. I got my ticket here. It's all written out. However, before I give it to you, I want to have a dog sniff. I'm going to call into headquarters. They're going to send down a dog. It's going to take maybe 45 minutes. You just sit there because the traffic stop is not, is not terminated until I give you your ticket. You going to allow that? If the formal handing of the ticket is not the end in your example, you're not. You're not going to give you the ticket until the dog comes and that's going to take 45 minutes. That was okay. No, the traffic stop is done. Well, he hands the ticket to him at that point in time. If the only reason he has not handed the ticket over, he's kept the ticket. And the reason that he has kept the ticket is for the dog to come

. But that is past. That is past the traffic stop. The traffic stop. Oh, it's done. You're not applying a formal test. I thought you were saying it's a formal test when you deliver the ticket is the termination point. But that's not right. No, that's no. The formal test. The formal test. The formal test. The formal test. You're under that. Not the case at all. The formal test is when the mission has been accomplished. If you pull someone over for the traffic offense, and if in fact you do all of the tasks that are necessary to complete it, when it is completed, it is done. What if the ticket says I need to think about this for a while? Well, the officer says I need to think about this for a while. I'm going to go back. I'm going to ponder how long it took you. I'm going to think about other tickets I've given in the past. And the dogs are going to be here in eight minutes. I think I need about 10 minutes to think about it. Is that okay since he hasn't written a ticket? He waits until he's thought about it for a while to write the ticket. That's not okay at all. It's what has to happen is the officer must be diligent. He must be diligent going towards the investigation of the traffic stop. Again, I think we're putting in and fighting the one that started to be misleading of this. I apologize. Handing of the ticket is not the end all. Handing of the ticket is when the tasks are done. I got pulled over for a driving offense, then it is over. And your example, Mr

. Chief Justice, if he's pondering, then he's not being diligent. If he's pondering and not being diligent, we ponder all the time. And we think we're being diligent. Pondering is not diligent. Unless the pondering is to avoid the diligence. And that's would be the question. The question then is if, in fact, the officer is pocketing the ticket. He said, I'm going to wait until the dog comes. You are then extending the time of the stop and it violates of the rule that you have in the bottom. I have really in mind. But I'm not sure. Can you ask for the registration? Usually, people have told me when you're stopped. The officer says license and registration. Is that okay? I've had friends that say the same thing, Mr. Chief Justice. Of course, that's okay. What about the registration is pertinent to the traffic stop? Well, what's pertinent about it is part of the traffic stop is the vehicle itself as well. Not only do you have the driver, which you're looking at, the driver, the driver's history, the car, all of those things are part and parcel. If you saw the car's worth, what does that have to do with the car? The car was just doing what the driver did. I don't see why you need the registration of the car. What you can do, no, you know, I think, Mr. Chief Justice, I think you do. I think that is part of investigating the traffic offense. Those are things that have been accepted and accepted might not be the right word, adopted as things that you can do in a traffic stop. Now, there are certainly times when you go beyond the traffic stop and you have the Johnson case. If in fact, you go beyond the, the, the, the traffic stop, even measurably beyond it, then you have violated the, the, the, the, the, the driver's rights and it is unconstitutional. The question in that case occurred during the traffic stop. Mr. O'Connor, is, is this particular traffic violation was not an arrestable offense? No. Under, under the best law, no, no, it was not. It's a traffic infraction. Just if it was an arrestable offense, they could arrest the driver and then impound the car and do an inventory search

. If it was an arrestable offense, yes, right, I think that's correct. But they, you say it's not an arrestable. It is not. And regardless, I mean, he was, say, here's the, here's the, what we do know about this case. Not only do you know the mission is done because of the tasks that were completed, you have the officer that says, I've done the tasks, everything that needs to be done with this offense or with this, with this traffic stop, is finished. It's finished. There's no question about that. Then there's no more justification. In order for the driver to be continued to be detained, there must be new justification or consent, which you did not get in this case, but you must let the driver go because you are at the end, you are finished with the traffic stop. You are finished with the reason that he was detained in the first place, the purpose going across the fog light. Can I just ask you a simple question? Yes, we've permitted a dog search, but in the cases that we have, sub-ballas and others, it was done simultaneously with the traffic stop, correct? Correct. You said in your brief, a dog sniff is not a police entitlement to which the Fourth Amendment limits must spend. Is there a line that we should draw at how long citizens should be kept by the side of the road? I think that the, all right. So I'm now in what that line is. That's what I think everybody's been asking you. The line is when, I can sort of with perhaps the Johnson case again when the stop is basically when the stop is done. Why don't you just do a simple test? I can, if you're going to do a stop, you can't reasonably extend or pass the time it takes to deal with the ticket, correct? I think that would be the simple rule. I think that the simple rule, if I may propose one, is the same one that Professor Lafayve has proposed, about a traffic stop, where a simple stop. Basically, what you do is the officer sees the infraction, the officer pulls the person over, the officer tells the person what the infraction is, he does the license, he does the registration, runs the car, then when it's done, he gives him the ticket, the warning ticket, that is the end of the traffic stop. There's another reason to hold the person after that point in time. You say he runs the car, he puts the license plate into the radio and waits for the report from the station as to whether or not the license is okay. Yes, Render. Why is that part of the mission and the dog sniff is not? That's the question. If you're not going to have a formal rule, you have to explain why somebody's pulled over for a broken tail light. Why, adding any time to the stop in order to do a records check, is part of the mission. But the dog sniff is not. I mean, I can understand the rule. You pull somebody over for a broken tail light. Maybe you get the registration to make sure you're right after ticket to the right person, then you give them the ticket and that's it. No time for the records check. What does the records check out to do with pulling somebody over for a broken tail light? I can understand that. But is that your argument? Well, if that is part of what the courts have accepted as part of the stop, you are looking at the vehicle itself

. Now, the dog you're on is different. The dog is different because the dog is not a task related, but the courts have accepted as related to a traffic stop. It is a collateral offense or a claddle event where you have the dog sniff and do nothing more than look for drugs. Nothing more than that. Nothing more than that. Yeah, I don't want to interrupt your answer is that the courts have accepted that you can do. You can prolong this a little bit to do a records check. But then you have to explain why the dog sniff is different. You're not prolonging it. You're on a record check. That is part of the stop. As long as the person, the officer, is diligently working towards the mission. Why is it part? As the questioning has suggested, it's unrelated to the traffic stop. You're looking to see if this person has a record committed at other crimes, for example. What is that got to do with whatever the traffic is? No, it's not. It's not stopping it at a stop sign. What has, checking to see if the defendant has a criminal record got to do with that? That is something that the courts are looking at as to whether that is something that you should be able to do. The courts have generally accepted that. What I can come back in this particular case is not something that happened in this case because it is clear cut. Now, that issue is extremely important, but it is something that I don't think can be done today. He can, I mean, one reason I think they do the records check, the officer needs to know who he's dealing with. I think one of the higher incidences of when officers are shot when they make a traffic stop. So if you run the registration, you see it's a stolen car. You need to know that before you go back and deal with the driver and other occupants. What if the police officer determines that he's concerned about that either as a general matter or as a specific matter? He takes the license of registration, but he's not going to go back to the car until he has back up. So he calls ahead and said, I would like backup and the person says, you know, it's going to take 25 minutes and he says, fine. Is that a legitimate reason? The traffic stop isn't over because he doesn't want to go back because he's alone and he doesn't know who these guys are. That is a legitimate reason. So he can call back now. Now, okay, what if the backup is a canine unit? The canine unit gets there. You've told us it hasn't been prolonged and as the officer goes up to give him the warning, the dog walks around the car. Is that all right? I think that that is all right and the reason that it's all right is because you have the diligence of the officer

. Officer safety is certainly a reason to ask for backup. Once the backup is there, the officer then completes the traffic offense. Everything is done and before that the dog has run around, I don't think that there is a problem with that because the delay was for a legitimate reason, not putting the ticket in your pocket. It's no further questions. I will request the remaining for a rebuttal. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. Is Anders? Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. In order to avoid the arbitrary results that petitioner's bright line rule would impose on traffic stops, a dog sniff conducted during a traffic stop should be subject to a reasonous analysis. How long is it reasonable you keep saying in your papers you have to look at the totality of the circumstances. I don't know what that means. I think that keeping me most of the time and chief, I've been stopped. Keeping me past. That's all right. Keeping me past, giving me the ticket is annoying as heck, whether it's five minutes, ten minutes, forty-five, but how do you define to Minimists? One of the circumstances that would make any difference in holding somebody five minutes or forty-five, it all has to do with your needs, not the passengers needs. Well, if I could explain what the reasonous approach is, first of all, it's not a strict Minimists approach that focuses just on the amount of time and isolation. It's a question about the objective reasonousness of the length of the stop. And we think that is there is a reasonous. So they're going to go into their home and search their home. Is that okay? The reasonous length of the stop is the amount of time that a stop is reasonable, even if it includes a dog sniff, if its duration is within the amount of time, the range of reasonably reasonable routine traffic stops that don't involve dog sniffs. So we're talking about a length of time that is still tethered to the traffic violation purpose of the stop. So in addition to not exceeding the sort of heartland of routine traffic stop durations, the officer also has to be reasonably diligent, which means that he needs to be focused overall. What's the heartland of routine traffic stops? You have a minute criterion. What is it, half an hour? I think within the universe of routine traffic stops, there's a range. I mean, the courts have applied a reasonous analysis to routine traffic stops for 30 years. What is it? What is it? I want to know what it is so I can complain when it's long. It depends on the circumstances that are presented during the stops. So for instance, a stop might reasonably take longer if there are more people in the car so that the officer has to check the criminal histories of more people in the car. He has to be more worried about officer safety. How many minutes when there are three people in the car? The court's a sur.

.. I mean, you got to pick a minute. Don't you have to pick a minute sooner or later to decide these cases? No, I think in every case the court has to look to the totality of the circumstances for a minute. And so it's not possible to pick a minute in the abstract because even, you know, it's a support study. What do you need? There are three people in the car and he stopped for a broken tail light. Well, as we said in our brief that when that situation occurs, courts have upheld stops of up to 35 minutes, something like that. I hope you've had enough of that. I have a great idea. Why don't we say taking your test, that the stop, you can do it, you know, whatever is normal there, but it cannot be prolonged more than the time reasonably required to complete the mission, which happens to be giving a temporary traffic ticket. Or we could say it cannot last longer than is necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop. What an original idea I have had. It happens to be language from two cases that we've already said. And are you saying anything different? I don't think so. If so, what? And if not, since this is a case where apparently the lower courts have said it did last longer than was reasonably necessary because the policeman said, that's why I, I mean, in effect said according to the judge, I called the dog after the stop was over or something like that. We cite those two cases, say those are the tests, a firm, a diverse, I guess, can we be, goodbye? We say to all the litigants and hope you are happy. Now, when I hear you say that, it's not what you've said, it's not what you think we should do. But I suspect you don't, but I wouldn't know why. Well, we think the amount of time reasonably required to complete the traffic stops is the duration that takes, looking toward, looking to other similar stops. It's the duration that is the time necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop or it is the time that is reasonably required to complete the mission. We can't do better than that. How can we? We are not traffic policeman and our experience on stops comes from unfortunately being the stop E, rather than the stop E. Right, and a stop and fall within that reasonably required time frame, even if it includes some of them. Okay, so that's the end of this. Well, of course, if it's in the middle of it, you call the dog and so forth, but you can't prolong it beyond the time reasonably necessary. Now, I've said that several times. I think you may agree with that. No, and then if you do agree with it, here it was prolonged more than reasonably necessary. At least that's what they found. Well, end of case. I think looking to whether the dog sniff occurs before or after the traffic ticket is given, well, a court dispositive significance to the officer's sequencing decision when he gives the ticket. As I understand position and position, it is that if in the midst of a traffic stop that say, last 10 minutes, the officer spends one minute on a dog sniff, that is okay, even though it has incrementally reached the length of the stop, but then you have that very same stop where the officer gives the ticket first and then ends a minute for a dog. There are a lot of problems. There are a lot of problems with any rule based on reasonableness, and of course there will be difficult problems. But here we've said twice that once the stop is over, i.e. goes beyond the time reasonably necessary to complete the mission, you cannot call in the dogs. And before you can, now of course there will be anomalies in that respect. Of course there can be bad faith exercises. Of course there can be confusion as to which is which, but that's inevitable in the situation and we can't do anything about it. Now, what can you suggest that would just help us and show we could do something about it? Well, I think it's a pretty serious anomaly when- Well, it may be that I mean I'm asking you what, what is it? What is it that we could say better than the language of the two cases? I mean, I'm not denying there is a problem with what you just said. There is. You might do it decide to do this beforehand and do all kinds of excuses, you know, people every day of the week. Make up reasons, it all, but if you want a better rule than the one laid down in the two cases, what? Well, I think there are two ways to understand a language in the two cases you're referring to in Cabalas. One is, as I think you're suggesting, that the time reasonably required to complete the traffic violation means that time and nothing else so that any delay attributable to a dog sniff as a per- Well, I don't think you have to do that. I mean, you know, you get into arguments about it. Was it reasonably necessary or not? It's that cannot be prolonged beyond the time what is reasonably necessary. It is difficult sometimes to decide what is reasonably necessary. Once we accept that a stop can be incrementally prolonged for purposes of a dog's sniff, if that dog's sniff occurs during the stop, so that the officer is doing nothing but that dog's sniff. He's adding a one-minute to a ten-minute dog's sniff, then the question will be whether that 11-minute total stop is reasonable. That's the exact same intrusion that would occur if the officer decided to do all of the traffic-related tasks first. That took ten minutes, and then he did a dog's sniff immediately afterwards. That's an 11-minute total stop. It's exactly the same intrusion, and it should be subject to a reasonableness analysis. So, just got a little clarification on your argument. If I understand what you've been saying, you are accepting the idea, aren't you? That the dog's sniff is something that's extraneous to the mission of the stop. Is that correct? We're not suggesting that it is an ordinary incident of the traffic stop that should be an ordinary incident. But since the Court said in Cabalis that a dog's sniff is permissible to perform in stops, sometimes we think that the analysis as to when it is permissible. Right. I'm not getting there yet. I just want to understand, because some of the questions are focused on, like, what is a stop? What's the mission of the stop? What's entailed in a normal stop? And you are not contesting that a dog's sniff is not something that's entailed in a normal stop, even though there might be occasions where you can do a dog's sniff attendant to a stop. I think that's right, but as other members of the Court have suggested, once there's probable cause to stop someone for a time, I think that's the case. What about this, have it? As far as you have a police department, that it's in a small state. They have every police cruiser has a canoid. And they make it just as common to, you know, to check on the license plate, call in to see if the person has any prior convictions

. There are a lot of problems with any rule based on reasonableness, and of course there will be difficult problems. But here we've said twice that once the stop is over, i.e. goes beyond the time reasonably necessary to complete the mission, you cannot call in the dogs. And before you can, now of course there will be anomalies in that respect. Of course there can be bad faith exercises. Of course there can be confusion as to which is which, but that's inevitable in the situation and we can't do anything about it. Now, what can you suggest that would just help us and show we could do something about it? Well, I think it's a pretty serious anomaly when- Well, it may be that I mean I'm asking you what, what is it? What is it that we could say better than the language of the two cases? I mean, I'm not denying there is a problem with what you just said. There is. You might do it decide to do this beforehand and do all kinds of excuses, you know, people every day of the week. Make up reasons, it all, but if you want a better rule than the one laid down in the two cases, what? Well, I think there are two ways to understand a language in the two cases you're referring to in Cabalas. One is, as I think you're suggesting, that the time reasonably required to complete the traffic violation means that time and nothing else so that any delay attributable to a dog sniff as a per- Well, I don't think you have to do that. I mean, you know, you get into arguments about it. Was it reasonably necessary or not? It's that cannot be prolonged beyond the time what is reasonably necessary. It is difficult sometimes to decide what is reasonably necessary. Once we accept that a stop can be incrementally prolonged for purposes of a dog's sniff, if that dog's sniff occurs during the stop, so that the officer is doing nothing but that dog's sniff. He's adding a one-minute to a ten-minute dog's sniff, then the question will be whether that 11-minute total stop is reasonable. That's the exact same intrusion that would occur if the officer decided to do all of the traffic-related tasks first. That took ten minutes, and then he did a dog's sniff immediately afterwards. That's an 11-minute total stop. It's exactly the same intrusion, and it should be subject to a reasonableness analysis. So, just got a little clarification on your argument. If I understand what you've been saying, you are accepting the idea, aren't you? That the dog's sniff is something that's extraneous to the mission of the stop. Is that correct? We're not suggesting that it is an ordinary incident of the traffic stop that should be an ordinary incident. But since the Court said in Cabalis that a dog's sniff is permissible to perform in stops, sometimes we think that the analysis as to when it is permissible. Right. I'm not getting there yet. I just want to understand, because some of the questions are focused on, like, what is a stop? What's the mission of the stop? What's entailed in a normal stop? And you are not contesting that a dog's sniff is not something that's entailed in a normal stop, even though there might be occasions where you can do a dog's sniff attendant to a stop. I think that's right, but as other members of the Court have suggested, once there's probable cause to stop someone for a time, I think that's the case. What about this, have it? As far as you have a police department, that it's in a small state. They have every police cruiser has a canoid. And they make it just as common to, you know, to check on the license plate, call in to see if the person has any prior convictions. So also, they always take the dog around the corner. It's a routine part of a traffic stop. It would be permissible for them to do that, as long as in each stop, it fell within the reasonable amount of time that it would take for a routine traffic stop. Including the time for the dog's sniff. I think we would not include the time for a dog's sniff on the baseline that we would Why not? I think it's, I think it's, that's what a routine traffic stop is for that jurisdiction. Well, I think our point is that once there's probable cause to perform a set of legitimate investigative inquiries, then if the officer can do other investigations during that time, such as a dog's sniff or unrelated questionings, then it ought to be constitutionally reasonable to do that. And that's what actually the courts of appeals for the most part have held with the commission. Okay, but that's where I thought the position that I've tried to say, let me say it more clearly. I think it is unlawful to have the dog sniff where the dog sniff un reasonably prolongs the stop. Is that, is that okay if I write with the government if I write those words in an opinion? That's right. We don't think that a dog's sniff performed right after the ticket per se unreasonably prolongs the stop. And if I could give you a hypothetical that, ah, well, how if the ticket writing is over, and there is nothing else to do, and the policeman says, hey, this is over, at that point, has it not unreasonably prolong the stop if the sniff takes place afterwards? I don't think so, we just imagine. Because it takes only two minutes, and that's not unreasonable, right? That's right, and it doesn't have to be good enough. The dog walks around the car for two minutes. Oh, it's only a violation of the Fourth Amendment for two minutes. Right? I mean, the reason I don't understand you, I don't understand when you talk about prolonging the stop. Are you talking about here's the amount of time that you are needed for the traffic stop, and you are allowed to prolong it sometime after that? Or is it that the sniff is part of the time for the stop, so you're not prolonging it at all. You're including it. You're wrapping it up in the stop. No, I think we admit that the dog's sniff can prolong the traffic stop, that it is not a routine part of every single traffic stop. We're not trying to make that argument. But I do think that just because the dog's sniff prolongs the traffic stop by some incremental amount of time doesn't mean that the stop is, first say, unreasonable. You can prolong it a little bit. It can prolong it a reasonable amount of time. And what else, and what else? Besides, we have the experienced dog's sniff. It doesn't relate to the traffic violation. What else? Could the police say I've taken the time I've needed to look into this traffic violation, but we're in a high prime neighborhood. So I'd like to keep this driver a bit longer. So I can just interrogate him about what other things he might have been doing. And it's not going to take eight minutes. But the traffic stop, you've taken care of that. And now instead of having the dog come, the police officer said, I have a few questions I want to ask you

. So also, they always take the dog around the corner. It's a routine part of a traffic stop. It would be permissible for them to do that, as long as in each stop, it fell within the reasonable amount of time that it would take for a routine traffic stop. Including the time for the dog's sniff. I think we would not include the time for a dog's sniff on the baseline that we would Why not? I think it's, I think it's, that's what a routine traffic stop is for that jurisdiction. Well, I think our point is that once there's probable cause to perform a set of legitimate investigative inquiries, then if the officer can do other investigations during that time, such as a dog's sniff or unrelated questionings, then it ought to be constitutionally reasonable to do that. And that's what actually the courts of appeals for the most part have held with the commission. Okay, but that's where I thought the position that I've tried to say, let me say it more clearly. I think it is unlawful to have the dog sniff where the dog sniff un reasonably prolongs the stop. Is that, is that okay if I write with the government if I write those words in an opinion? That's right. We don't think that a dog's sniff performed right after the ticket per se unreasonably prolongs the stop. And if I could give you a hypothetical that, ah, well, how if the ticket writing is over, and there is nothing else to do, and the policeman says, hey, this is over, at that point, has it not unreasonably prolong the stop if the sniff takes place afterwards? I don't think so, we just imagine. Because it takes only two minutes, and that's not unreasonable, right? That's right, and it doesn't have to be good enough. The dog walks around the car for two minutes. Oh, it's only a violation of the Fourth Amendment for two minutes. Right? I mean, the reason I don't understand you, I don't understand when you talk about prolonging the stop. Are you talking about here's the amount of time that you are needed for the traffic stop, and you are allowed to prolong it sometime after that? Or is it that the sniff is part of the time for the stop, so you're not prolonging it at all. You're including it. You're wrapping it up in the stop. No, I think we admit that the dog's sniff can prolong the traffic stop, that it is not a routine part of every single traffic stop. We're not trying to make that argument. But I do think that just because the dog's sniff prolongs the traffic stop by some incremental amount of time doesn't mean that the stop is, first say, unreasonable. You can prolong it a little bit. It can prolong it a reasonable amount of time. And what else, and what else? Besides, we have the experienced dog's sniff. It doesn't relate to the traffic violation. What else? Could the police say I've taken the time I've needed to look into this traffic violation, but we're in a high prime neighborhood. So I'd like to keep this driver a bit longer. So I can just interrogate him about what other things he might have been doing. And it's not going to take eight minutes. But the traffic stop, you've taken care of that. And now instead of having the dog come, the police officer said, I have a few questions I want to ask you. Yes, the court held the court held an Arizona versus Johnson that questioning about an unrelated matter is not like a dog's sniff. It does not an independent Fourth Amendment intrusion. So again, I think the only interest at stake from the individual's point of view is the interest against unreasonable delay. And since that is the case, I think that the officer can incrementally extend the stop so long as the old liberation of the stop. You say that? It may not seem as if we are, but to me we are. Now, what about this? I see your problem is you said, well, you can't prolong the stop, the traffic stop. More than reasonably, you know, it has to be take the time reasonably required to complete the mission. That's what it says, complete the mission. So we have the intermission prolongation, which has to be reasonable. And we have complete the mission. So complete the mission. Once the mission is completed, it's over. That's language from the opinion too. Complete, complete, goodbye, over. At that point, it becomes a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And that will lead to arbitrary results. And if I could just give you one scenario where that could occur and then tell you why practically officers often end up or need to do the dog's sniff after the tickets. So the hypothetical that I propose is that if you imagine you have two officers conducting a stop. And the first officer is explaining the ticket and what's happening with the ticket to the person, to the driver. While he's doing that, the second officer is performing the dog's sniff around the car. If the officer who's explaining the ticket ends first and the dog's sniff takes another 30 seconds, I don't think there's any reason to say that stop, which maybe lasted a total 10 minutes, has gone on for longer than reasonably required. Well, I have a real fundamental question. Is this line drawing is only here because we've now created a Fourth Amendment entitlement to search for drugs by using dogs whenever anybody's stop. Because that's what you're proposing. And is that really what the Fourth Amendment should permit? I don't think it's an entitlement just a sort of my or I think that once the Court said in Cabalas that it is permissible in some circumstances to perform a dog's sniff during a stop. Well, in some circumstances, so what don't you keep it cabin to Cabalas, which is when it's being done simultaneously with writing the ticket, if it's not, then it's unlawful. Well, because that leads to arbitrary results as I was explaining with Justice Breyer, I think in that hypothetical, it's not arbitrary. The Fourth Amendment is arbitrary by its nature. It says, you can't search unless you have probable cause to search. Well, Petitioners rule would say that the hypothetical by proposed is impermissible in every circumstance. That even a 30-second extension of a short traffic stop is always unreasonable, even if that stop falls within the amount of time it usually takes to do routine traffic stop. And the office is reasonably diligent with respect to the traffic mission

. Yes, the court held the court held an Arizona versus Johnson that questioning about an unrelated matter is not like a dog's sniff. It does not an independent Fourth Amendment intrusion. So again, I think the only interest at stake from the individual's point of view is the interest against unreasonable delay. And since that is the case, I think that the officer can incrementally extend the stop so long as the old liberation of the stop. You say that? It may not seem as if we are, but to me we are. Now, what about this? I see your problem is you said, well, you can't prolong the stop, the traffic stop. More than reasonably, you know, it has to be take the time reasonably required to complete the mission. That's what it says, complete the mission. So we have the intermission prolongation, which has to be reasonable. And we have complete the mission. So complete the mission. Once the mission is completed, it's over. That's language from the opinion too. Complete, complete, goodbye, over. At that point, it becomes a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And that will lead to arbitrary results. And if I could just give you one scenario where that could occur and then tell you why practically officers often end up or need to do the dog's sniff after the tickets. So the hypothetical that I propose is that if you imagine you have two officers conducting a stop. And the first officer is explaining the ticket and what's happening with the ticket to the person, to the driver. While he's doing that, the second officer is performing the dog's sniff around the car. If the officer who's explaining the ticket ends first and the dog's sniff takes another 30 seconds, I don't think there's any reason to say that stop, which maybe lasted a total 10 minutes, has gone on for longer than reasonably required. Well, I have a real fundamental question. Is this line drawing is only here because we've now created a Fourth Amendment entitlement to search for drugs by using dogs whenever anybody's stop. Because that's what you're proposing. And is that really what the Fourth Amendment should permit? I don't think it's an entitlement just a sort of my or I think that once the Court said in Cabalas that it is permissible in some circumstances to perform a dog's sniff during a stop. Well, in some circumstances, so what don't you keep it cabin to Cabalas, which is when it's being done simultaneously with writing the ticket, if it's not, then it's unlawful. Well, because that leads to arbitrary results as I was explaining with Justice Breyer, I think in that hypothetical, it's not arbitrary. The Fourth Amendment is arbitrary by its nature. It says, you can't search unless you have probable cause to search. Well, Petitioners rule would say that the hypothetical by proposed is impermissible in every circumstance. That even a 30-second extension of a short traffic stop is always unreasonable, even if that stop falls within the amount of time it usually takes to do routine traffic stop. And the office is reasonably diligent with respect to the traffic mission. You know, I think I read Cabalas differently than you. Here's what I think Cabalas agrees with you on, and here's what I think Cabalas doesn't. Cabalas definitely agrees with you on that a dog's sniff is not part of the traffic stop. So I think that you and Cabalas are definitely in the same place there. And Cabalas definitely says that even though a dog's sniff is not part of the mission of the traffic stop, we're going to allow a dog's sniff if the dog's sniff doesn't extend the traffic stop. It's like, you know, there are two officers or there's some other reason why you're not being detained a moment longer because of the dog's sniff. And Cabalas basically says, sure, no harm, no foul on that one, right? But then you were saying Cabalas gives you this extra leeway to detain people, even though it is longer than an ordinary traffic stop would take. And I think that's just not right. I mean, I think that reasonableness language in Cabalas is all about, it's an extra limitation, the Court says. It says, like, don't think just because this officer was really slow and it took a really long time to do the traffic stop. And he was able, because of that, to get another officer in and do a dog's sniff and it was all with, it's like an additional limitation that, no, you have to be diligent and you have to be reasonable in the way you conduct the traffic stop. And if you're not, the dog's sniff can't come in even though it was conducted during the time the traffic stop occurred. But that's an additional constraint. It's not some kind of extra leeway for the police officers to do things outside the bounds of the traffic stop itself. Well, I think that's one way to read Cabalas' language. The reason we don't think that that's the right way is that we know after Cabalas that a dog's sniff is not an independent Fourth Amendment intrusion, it's not a search. We also know that it doesn't impose, it doesn't violate any independent scope limitation on a track. Yes, it's not a search, but the theory of Cabalas and of all of our questions is that you can't, and of all of our cases, is that you really can't detain somebody if you don't have some kind of objective, reasonable basis for doing so, and that any detention, and, you know, it might be 10 minutes, might be five minutes, or it might be two minutes, without that kind of basis, is a Fourth Amendment violation. But once the individuals are already being detained for a traffic stop, and probable cause, I think the implication of Cabalas is that, that if the dog's sniff takes any time, then the intrusion we're talking about is the incremental delay. It's a temporal intrusion. And so from the individual's perspective, her interest in, it's the same in avoiding the dog's sniff as it isn't avoiding a warrant check or any other incident of a stop. It's the interest against unreasonable delay, and so because that's the case, we think that delays attrubital to dog's sniff should be treated like delays attributable to a warrant check or anything else. They should be careful. You say, you've used several times the phrase incremental. In my, I sense that it being less than, right? I mean, if the actual traffic stop is five minutes, then you wouldn't say a 15-minute dog's sniff is incremental. So does the dog's sniff have to be less than the traffic stop? I think that one of the things that Port should look to is the relative proportion of time to dog's sniff to the rest of the stop. And the reason I think that's relevant is that the officer, this is the case in routine traffic stops as well. The officer has to be reasonably diligent, and so I think reasonably diligence can take into account whether the officer is predominantly working and resolving the traffic violation. But if he's able to do a dog's sniff within a reasonable amount of time and not have the traffic stop exceed the duration of a reasonable routine traffic stop, then he ought to be able to say that. And I, is that almost always the case that the dog's sniff is going to take longer than the traffic stop? I mean, I would assume so. The officer's license or registration goes back, checks them, comes back, gives you a ticket. Dog's sniff is something else altogether, assuming the dog's there

. You know, I think I read Cabalas differently than you. Here's what I think Cabalas agrees with you on, and here's what I think Cabalas doesn't. Cabalas definitely agrees with you on that a dog's sniff is not part of the traffic stop. So I think that you and Cabalas are definitely in the same place there. And Cabalas definitely says that even though a dog's sniff is not part of the mission of the traffic stop, we're going to allow a dog's sniff if the dog's sniff doesn't extend the traffic stop. It's like, you know, there are two officers or there's some other reason why you're not being detained a moment longer because of the dog's sniff. And Cabalas basically says, sure, no harm, no foul on that one, right? But then you were saying Cabalas gives you this extra leeway to detain people, even though it is longer than an ordinary traffic stop would take. And I think that's just not right. I mean, I think that reasonableness language in Cabalas is all about, it's an extra limitation, the Court says. It says, like, don't think just because this officer was really slow and it took a really long time to do the traffic stop. And he was able, because of that, to get another officer in and do a dog's sniff and it was all with, it's like an additional limitation that, no, you have to be diligent and you have to be reasonable in the way you conduct the traffic stop. And if you're not, the dog's sniff can't come in even though it was conducted during the time the traffic stop occurred. But that's an additional constraint. It's not some kind of extra leeway for the police officers to do things outside the bounds of the traffic stop itself. Well, I think that's one way to read Cabalas' language. The reason we don't think that that's the right way is that we know after Cabalas that a dog's sniff is not an independent Fourth Amendment intrusion, it's not a search. We also know that it doesn't impose, it doesn't violate any independent scope limitation on a track. Yes, it's not a search, but the theory of Cabalas and of all of our questions is that you can't, and of all of our cases, is that you really can't detain somebody if you don't have some kind of objective, reasonable basis for doing so, and that any detention, and, you know, it might be 10 minutes, might be five minutes, or it might be two minutes, without that kind of basis, is a Fourth Amendment violation. But once the individuals are already being detained for a traffic stop, and probable cause, I think the implication of Cabalas is that, that if the dog's sniff takes any time, then the intrusion we're talking about is the incremental delay. It's a temporal intrusion. And so from the individual's perspective, her interest in, it's the same in avoiding the dog's sniff as it isn't avoiding a warrant check or any other incident of a stop. It's the interest against unreasonable delay, and so because that's the case, we think that delays attrubital to dog's sniff should be treated like delays attributable to a warrant check or anything else. They should be careful. You say, you've used several times the phrase incremental. In my, I sense that it being less than, right? I mean, if the actual traffic stop is five minutes, then you wouldn't say a 15-minute dog's sniff is incremental. So does the dog's sniff have to be less than the traffic stop? I think that one of the things that Port should look to is the relative proportion of time to dog's sniff to the rest of the stop. And the reason I think that's relevant is that the officer, this is the case in routine traffic stops as well. The officer has to be reasonably diligent, and so I think reasonably diligence can take into account whether the officer is predominantly working and resolving the traffic violation. But if he's able to do a dog's sniff within a reasonable amount of time and not have the traffic stop exceed the duration of a reasonable routine traffic stop, then he ought to be able to say that. And I, is that almost always the case that the dog's sniff is going to take longer than the traffic stop? I mean, I would assume so. The officer's license or registration goes back, checks them, comes back, gives you a ticket. Dog's sniff is something else altogether, assuming the dog's there. They've got to get, you know, walk around the car. If it really has to be incremental, I'm not sure it's hardly ever going to be reasonable. Well, the dog's sniff itself, I think, is a matter of seconds, I think, in the case, as it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 90 seconds to do a dog's sniff. So it is something that can be an incremental as I was just saying. The dog happens to be there, I guess. Well, even in a situation where the dog isn't there already, I mean, if the officer calls for the dog early enough, if the dog arrives, I mean, there are, there are situations in the cases we cited this, I'm infinting a 20-var brief, where you have the dog arriving just as the officer is about to give the ticket. So that is a snare that can occur. I do think there are several reasons why an officer may want to give the ticket first and then do the dog sniff immediately, and one of them is officer safety. I think everything that an officer does during a traffic stop, how he orders his tasks and how he performs them, is infused with officer safety considerations. And so it can be a safer thing to ask, to use the ticket, need to explain the ticket, as a non-confrontational way of taking the program. I see that. What about another aspect, as I was saying at the way Justice Kagan described it? And one virtue of that now, but you may not think it does work. Administrative. What do you tell the police department? I say, well, when your in traffic stops, can you use dogs to sniff? Yeah, you can. But remember, once it's over, the traffic stop, it's over. Done, finished. And by the way, if it isn't over yet, you still burn me and get into trouble if you've unreasonably prolonged the stop just to get the sniff. Now, that seems pretty easy to explain. It's fairly bright line. And as soon as you get into this other, just leaving it totally open, there's no check really on the, not too much of one. What would you, no, I'm putting that to you to get your response. So as I understand it, you're saying that, that, you're just subject to a reasonous analysis that the officer can do a dog sniff, and he can prolong the stop either before. No, I was saying two parts, part one. Traffic stoppers. You can use a dog sniff when you stop, but not once the stop is over, period, unless you have cause or something. And during the stop, that's part two. You can't prolong it, but for a reason, you have to do it all within a reasonable time. Okay, you can't unreasonably prolong it to get your dog in. See, you tell them those two things. Once you've told them the two things, they've got it in their heads. When this is over, good bye dog. And it's not over, they better be careful not unreasonably to prolong it

. They've got to get, you know, walk around the car. If it really has to be incremental, I'm not sure it's hardly ever going to be reasonable. Well, the dog's sniff itself, I think, is a matter of seconds, I think, in the case, as it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 90 seconds to do a dog's sniff. So it is something that can be an incremental as I was just saying. The dog happens to be there, I guess. Well, even in a situation where the dog isn't there already, I mean, if the officer calls for the dog early enough, if the dog arrives, I mean, there are, there are situations in the cases we cited this, I'm infinting a 20-var brief, where you have the dog arriving just as the officer is about to give the ticket. So that is a snare that can occur. I do think there are several reasons why an officer may want to give the ticket first and then do the dog sniff immediately, and one of them is officer safety. I think everything that an officer does during a traffic stop, how he orders his tasks and how he performs them, is infused with officer safety considerations. And so it can be a safer thing to ask, to use the ticket, need to explain the ticket, as a non-confrontational way of taking the program. I see that. What about another aspect, as I was saying at the way Justice Kagan described it? And one virtue of that now, but you may not think it does work. Administrative. What do you tell the police department? I say, well, when your in traffic stops, can you use dogs to sniff? Yeah, you can. But remember, once it's over, the traffic stop, it's over. Done, finished. And by the way, if it isn't over yet, you still burn me and get into trouble if you've unreasonably prolonged the stop just to get the sniff. Now, that seems pretty easy to explain. It's fairly bright line. And as soon as you get into this other, just leaving it totally open, there's no check really on the, not too much of one. What would you, no, I'm putting that to you to get your response. So as I understand it, you're saying that, that, you're just subject to a reasonous analysis that the officer can do a dog sniff, and he can prolong the stop either before. No, I was saying two parts, part one. Traffic stoppers. You can use a dog sniff when you stop, but not once the stop is over, period, unless you have cause or something. And during the stop, that's part two. You can't prolong it, but for a reason, you have to do it all within a reasonable time. Okay, you can't unreasonably prolong it to get your dog in. See, you tell them those two things. Once you've told them the two things, they've got it in their heads. When this is over, good bye dog. And it's not over, they better be careful not unreasonably to prolong it. Now, they'll understand that, and it will be both protecting what the Fourth Amendment protects, and also I think giving them enough leeway to conduct a traffic stop. Well, so that means the officer's sequencing decision entirely dispositive of whether the dog's sniff can occur. If it happens before the stop, then it's fine, and after the stop, not. I think that does create arbitrary results from the perspective of the intrusion on the individual. But from the officer's perspective, I think there's an interest in officers having some leeway to sequence the traffic stop as the way this is. This is, Breyer has said this. What he's saying is you can't unreasonably prolong it. You can't hold the person any measurable time that was allowed to get the dog. And yes, it has to do with the resources of the police department, but we can't keep bending the Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement, particularly when this stop is not incidental to the purpose of the stop. It's purely to help the police get more criminals, yes. But then the Fourth Amendment becomes a useless piece of paper. It isn't. I didn't understand. I think if I take what I said and take your answer, I have to say your answer is right. It's just a bad effect of my rule. And the virtue of, you know, the two-part rule is what we said was the virtue of it. And it's like, in many cases, there just isn't much more to say. And you have to say, am I willing to run this? They might purposely change the sequence. They might. That's true. Somebody might. And I don't know what to do about that, the answer is I couldn't do anything about it. Well, we think there's a law enforcement interest in officers having some leeway to sequence the stop as they see fit. I mean, I was explaining the reasons that an officer might want to give the ticket contemporaneously with or before to adopt the position. So, it's my standard that so hypotheticals, please pull somebody over and starts the process. And then the police officer says, you know, I'd like a cigarette break now. The cigarette probably takes about as long as the dog sniff took on this. And you just, you know, smokes a cigarette and it goes back to work. All right. Would you say that that was unconstitutional prolongation of the stop? Well, an officer always has to be reasonably diligent. So, at a certain point, if the officer takes breaks for no valid law enforcement reason, that is going to be dilatory. And so the stop would become unreasonable

. Now, they'll understand that, and it will be both protecting what the Fourth Amendment protects, and also I think giving them enough leeway to conduct a traffic stop. Well, so that means the officer's sequencing decision entirely dispositive of whether the dog's sniff can occur. If it happens before the stop, then it's fine, and after the stop, not. I think that does create arbitrary results from the perspective of the intrusion on the individual. But from the officer's perspective, I think there's an interest in officers having some leeway to sequence the traffic stop as the way this is. This is, Breyer has said this. What he's saying is you can't unreasonably prolong it. You can't hold the person any measurable time that was allowed to get the dog. And yes, it has to do with the resources of the police department, but we can't keep bending the Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement, particularly when this stop is not incidental to the purpose of the stop. It's purely to help the police get more criminals, yes. But then the Fourth Amendment becomes a useless piece of paper. It isn't. I didn't understand. I think if I take what I said and take your answer, I have to say your answer is right. It's just a bad effect of my rule. And the virtue of, you know, the two-part rule is what we said was the virtue of it. And it's like, in many cases, there just isn't much more to say. And you have to say, am I willing to run this? They might purposely change the sequence. They might. That's true. Somebody might. And I don't know what to do about that, the answer is I couldn't do anything about it. Well, we think there's a law enforcement interest in officers having some leeway to sequence the stop as they see fit. I mean, I was explaining the reasons that an officer might want to give the ticket contemporaneously with or before to adopt the position. So, it's my standard that so hypotheticals, please pull somebody over and starts the process. And then the police officer says, you know, I'd like a cigarette break now. The cigarette probably takes about as long as the dog sniff took on this. And you just, you know, smokes a cigarette and it goes back to work. All right. Would you say that that was unconstitutional prolongation of the stop? Well, an officer always has to be reasonably diligent. So, at a certain point, if the officer takes breaks for no valid law enforcement reason, that is going to be dilatory. And so the stop would become unreasonable. Okay. But it would become unreasonable because there he was. He wasn't doing anything related to the mission of the stop. That it's true if he gave the ticket. And then said, I want you to stay while I take a cigarette break or it's true if he did it before. He gave the ticket either way. I guess what I'm saying to you is I kind of think it's the same thing. Is that once you've acknowledged that the dog sniff is something that's extraneous to the stop itself, it's obviously more helpful to the police than a cigarette break, but it's extraneous to the stop itself than the same rules apply as if the police officer had just taken a moratorium on the stop in the middle in order to conduct his own business. I think when a traffic stop is occurring, when an officer has someone stopped, we don't expect them to ignore potential evidence of criminal behavior. In fact, we think they'd be remiss if they did. And so we think that if the officer is able to do a dog sniff within a reasonable time and is still reasonably diligent with respect to the traffic stop violation, it ought to be constitutionally legal. But then you really are saying, because we have a reason to pull you over for a traffic stop, that gives us some extra time to start questioning you about other law enforcement related things. And to do other law enforcement related business. And I never thought that that was the rule. I always thought is that once the objective basis for the stop dissipated, that was it. Well, I think if you take unrelated questioning, for instance, questioning about other crime, other criminal activity, I think there's a strong law enforcement interest in officers having some leeway to pursue this within a stop, as long as it's still in the board. You told me the officer could do that. At least that's what I understood you answered to be. That's right, the officer can do that. And I think it's important that the officer have some leeway, so long as the overall time remains reasonable. Because if you think about questioning, if the officer starts a question about where the person is going and that kind of thing, we don't want officers to have to make finely tuned judgments in the moment about whether the next question he wants to ask is sufficiently related to the traffic mission or not. That's why we think there needs to be some leeway for the officers to take some time to pursue the things that they observe, as long as they can do that within the amount of time that would be reasonable and a routine traffic stop. And we think it should be constitutionally reasonable to do that. And I would say that the, I think the reasonableness analysis, it allows courts to calibrate based on the nature and severity of the intrusion. Under Petitioner's view, even a 30 second extension of a traffic stop for a dog sniff would be unreasonable in every case. But what if you have a reasonableness? With your rule is going to lead to misanders, is something along the lines of, like everybody will decide, 30 minutes or 40 minutes, I think you say at one point in your brief, is reasonable for a traffic stop. And if you see a tail light violation, that's 40 minutes of free time for the police officers to investigate any crimes that they want, because they can do it all in the range of what you've decided is kind of the reasonable traffic stop. I don't think that's how we envision the analysis going, because the ultimate length of time has to be within the duration of a routine traffic stop that doesn't involve a dog sniff. And that's going to vary based on the circumstances, because routine traffic stops, what's reasonable varies based on the circumstances. So what we think courts can do is they can look at what the officer actually did, and they can look to, stops involving similar circumstances, but not dog sniffs, and determine whether the officer was able to do the whole thing within a reasonable amount of time. I think that's essentially what the court contemplated in Arnellus, that with these Fourth Amendment inquiries, that they're fact specific, but the harder cases will be appealed, and there will start being guidelines. The courts can look to similar cases

. Okay. But it would become unreasonable because there he was. He wasn't doing anything related to the mission of the stop. That it's true if he gave the ticket. And then said, I want you to stay while I take a cigarette break or it's true if he did it before. He gave the ticket either way. I guess what I'm saying to you is I kind of think it's the same thing. Is that once you've acknowledged that the dog sniff is something that's extraneous to the stop itself, it's obviously more helpful to the police than a cigarette break, but it's extraneous to the stop itself than the same rules apply as if the police officer had just taken a moratorium on the stop in the middle in order to conduct his own business. I think when a traffic stop is occurring, when an officer has someone stopped, we don't expect them to ignore potential evidence of criminal behavior. In fact, we think they'd be remiss if they did. And so we think that if the officer is able to do a dog sniff within a reasonable time and is still reasonably diligent with respect to the traffic stop violation, it ought to be constitutionally legal. But then you really are saying, because we have a reason to pull you over for a traffic stop, that gives us some extra time to start questioning you about other law enforcement related things. And to do other law enforcement related business. And I never thought that that was the rule. I always thought is that once the objective basis for the stop dissipated, that was it. Well, I think if you take unrelated questioning, for instance, questioning about other crime, other criminal activity, I think there's a strong law enforcement interest in officers having some leeway to pursue this within a stop, as long as it's still in the board. You told me the officer could do that. At least that's what I understood you answered to be. That's right, the officer can do that. And I think it's important that the officer have some leeway, so long as the overall time remains reasonable. Because if you think about questioning, if the officer starts a question about where the person is going and that kind of thing, we don't want officers to have to make finely tuned judgments in the moment about whether the next question he wants to ask is sufficiently related to the traffic mission or not. That's why we think there needs to be some leeway for the officers to take some time to pursue the things that they observe, as long as they can do that within the amount of time that would be reasonable and a routine traffic stop. And we think it should be constitutionally reasonable to do that. And I would say that the, I think the reasonableness analysis, it allows courts to calibrate based on the nature and severity of the intrusion. Under Petitioner's view, even a 30 second extension of a traffic stop for a dog sniff would be unreasonable in every case. But what if you have a reasonableness? With your rule is going to lead to misanders, is something along the lines of, like everybody will decide, 30 minutes or 40 minutes, I think you say at one point in your brief, is reasonable for a traffic stop. And if you see a tail light violation, that's 40 minutes of free time for the police officers to investigate any crimes that they want, because they can do it all in the range of what you've decided is kind of the reasonable traffic stop. I don't think that's how we envision the analysis going, because the ultimate length of time has to be within the duration of a routine traffic stop that doesn't involve a dog sniff. And that's going to vary based on the circumstances, because routine traffic stops, what's reasonable varies based on the circumstances. So what we think courts can do is they can look at what the officer actually did, and they can look to, stops involving similar circumstances, but not dog sniffs, and determine whether the officer was able to do the whole thing within a reasonable amount of time. I think that's essentially what the court contemplated in Arnellus, that with these Fourth Amendment inquiries, that they're fact specific, but the harder cases will be appealed, and there will start being guidelines. The courts can look to similar cases. We think the same thing can happen here, and indeed it already has happened with respect to unrelated questioning. There, the vast majority of the courts have appeals have said that you can extend a traffic stop for unrelated questioning, and the courts have looked to how much time do the questioning take, how long was the overall stop, and was the officer reasonably diligent with respect to the traffic mission. And we think the same thing should happen here, whether the dog sniff is before or after the ticket. That's the only rule that avoids arbitrary results. If there are no further questions. Thank you, Ms. Anders. Mr. O'Connor, you have six minutes left. Thank you, Justice Breyer. It was much better than I said it. I think the point was, well, well, may be. Well, then what do you think about her response? Because I thought it was, I mean, she has an interesting point. I mean, an important point. She said, you know the trouble with what I said, which, of course, you think is okay. She said, it's, here's what's really going to happen, is that the police will think, gee, I just better be sure those dogs get here in time. And so what they'll do is tend to prolong the stops. And they'll want to be sure the dogs get there. And so if you really added all this up and thought about it even experimentally, the class of stopped drivers where there are hunches is going to end up waiting longer. And being in custody in a sense longer than if we follow her approach. And her approach is just to say, hey, apply reasonableness across the board. A few extra minutes, isn't that big a deal? I took her answer to be something like that. And I thought it was a, and it's a point. It's a point. So what do you think? Well, we hope that if you look at officers' diligence, there are things that will help enforce that. One is the community. Will the community start to accept 40-minute stops? Well, the law enforcement officer himself expected, I'm going to stop being a police officer for two, three, four minutes, one just other things going on. I think that's very, very, very significant. Reasonableness. Reasonableness stops when you have all the stop end. At that point in time, reasonableness has nothing more to do with it because the person should be released until there is another reason, another purpose for the stop. A reasonable, articible suspicion

. We think the same thing can happen here, and indeed it already has happened with respect to unrelated questioning. There, the vast majority of the courts have appeals have said that you can extend a traffic stop for unrelated questioning, and the courts have looked to how much time do the questioning take, how long was the overall stop, and was the officer reasonably diligent with respect to the traffic mission. And we think the same thing should happen here, whether the dog sniff is before or after the ticket. That's the only rule that avoids arbitrary results. If there are no further questions. Thank you, Ms. Anders. Mr. O'Connor, you have six minutes left. Thank you, Justice Breyer. It was much better than I said it. I think the point was, well, well, may be. Well, then what do you think about her response? Because I thought it was, I mean, she has an interesting point. I mean, an important point. She said, you know the trouble with what I said, which, of course, you think is okay. She said, it's, here's what's really going to happen, is that the police will think, gee, I just better be sure those dogs get here in time. And so what they'll do is tend to prolong the stops. And they'll want to be sure the dogs get there. And so if you really added all this up and thought about it even experimentally, the class of stopped drivers where there are hunches is going to end up waiting longer. And being in custody in a sense longer than if we follow her approach. And her approach is just to say, hey, apply reasonableness across the board. A few extra minutes, isn't that big a deal? I took her answer to be something like that. And I thought it was a, and it's a point. It's a point. So what do you think? Well, we hope that if you look at officers' diligence, there are things that will help enforce that. One is the community. Will the community start to accept 40-minute stops? Well, the law enforcement officer himself expected, I'm going to stop being a police officer for two, three, four minutes, one just other things going on. I think that's very, very, very significant. Reasonableness. Reasonableness stops when you have all the stop end. At that point in time, reasonableness has nothing more to do with it because the person should be released until there is another reason, another purpose for the stop. A reasonable, articible suspicion. Or you have consent. Otherwise, it is done. Here's the problem with the reasonableness. There was the statement that was made that it's not reasonable, doesn't give the officers enough time. We're not talking about the fourth amendment and the officers and open season on the officers and what the officers can do. We're talking about the fourth amendment and the protections that it has on the driver. You don't look at, well, it's only going to be a minute longer if you do it this way. The fourth amendment shuts it off when it is done. What, say about the questioning that took place in this case. Where are you going? Are you going to buy a car, someplace, all of that? Was that part of the mission? Yes, we didn't raise that. Your Honor, is that part of the mission? It is something that hasn't been challenged. It has been accepted as being part of the mission. I will tell you that's what the Court say that has been accepted as part of the mission. I have lots of questions before as to what is part of the mission and how far you go. That's for the Court's to determine. My response to that? I don't know as Court's is this Court. That's what I don't understand about your position. It's a definition of the mission. I can understand a definition that says, just what you need to do to resolve the traffic violation, period. But if it includes other things like questioning about where are you going to buy a car and all that or doing your records check, then I don't really don't see why. I want to know what the difference is between that and having a dog sniff. Well, the other things that are task and part of the traffic offense, where there's no doubt, and that could be questionable, but there's no doubt that a dog sniff is not part of the offense. That's collateral, and it's nothing but an investigation. Now, the last thing that I would like to do, Justice Ginsburg, is that answer your question as to the eight circuit and the eight circuit did not make a decision as to the probable cause. But you do have a court that did. The trial level court did make that decision. It made the decision that it was probable cause. It was only a hunch, but that would ordinarily be reviewable by the Court of Appeals, Court of Appeals to inject to it. So it's an open question for the Court of Appeals. If it can go to the Court of Appeals, but this is, I mean, you have the question that it was based on a hunch, but you give the discretion to the magistrate who heard the evidence. The magistrate had a question asked to the credibility of this witness, and if you have a question as to the credibility of the witness, then there is not sufficient facts to make a determination as to whether, in fact, there's probable cause. We would ask the Court to adopt the finding that there is no probable cause

. That is something that you can do as a reviewing court, because the facts have been established. We know that the judge had problems with the credibility of the witness, the facts that are left is not enough to establish any type of reasonable suspicion. What we do for traditionally calming is you make the decision here now, because the eighth circuit would have to do the same thing. The eighth circuit would have to make a decision based on the magistrate's finding of lack of credibility, and that's why I would ask the Court to do today. Thank you, counsel. The case is submitted